Driving into Mesa Verde National Park on 09/30, we saw evidence of the prior day’s hailstorm. It looked like snow on the sides of the road and on the hillsides, but most of it melted during the day. The first lookout point was over 8,000 feet in elevation and afforded a 360-degree view of snow-capped mountains to the north, the valley below to the west, and Shiprock, NM to the south. Mesa Verde is famous for the ruins of the cliff-dwelling Ancient Puebloans. There is evidence of their settlement as early as 500 A.D. to 1300 A.D., when their homes evolved from pit houses on top of the mesa to the unbelievable cliff-dwellings under the canyon’s stone arches, accessed from the top, not the bottom of the canyons! We descended to the Cliff Palace, largest of
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